AMD readying three mobile Fusion chipsets

For two different platforms

SO FAR NOT a lot of information has made its way out from AMD with regards to its upcoming Fusion platforms, but we’ve gotten our hands on some information that is about to change that. AMD is readying three chipset solutions for its upcoming mobile Fusion processors, one for Ontario and two for Llano and there are some real surprises at hand.

Let’s start with the Hudson-M1 which is the chipset for Ontario – and most likely for Zacate as well – combine the two and you have the Brazos platform. The Hudson-M1 is a fairly feature stripped chipset, although it’s still vastly more feature rich than Intel’s low-end mobile chipset. It supports up to six SATA 6Gbps drives, as well as 7.1-channel audio, up to 14 USB 2.0 ports, four PCI Express gen 2 x1 lanes and a x4 gen 1 UMI (Unified Media Interface) which seems to be AMD’s new chipset interconnect. Unlike earlier reports it looks like we won’t be seeing native USB 3.0 support for this platform.

Next up with have the Hudson-M2 which is intended for Llano as part of the Sabine platform. This is AMD’s new mid-range chipset and it adds support for Gigabit Ethernet, support for something that is listed as EEE which might refer to FireWire, but it could be just about anything, RAID 0 /1 support, a built in SD controller which sadly seems to be limited to SDHC and DisplayPort connectivity. Again, no native USB 3.0 support which might be seen as somewhat stingy on a mid-range platform. Lastly we have the Hudson-M3 which is the fully kitted out chipset for Llano which adds four USB 3.0 ports to the Hudson-M2 while the remaining specifications are exactly the same.

AMD has dropped PCI support on all three chipsets and interestingly enough, it seems like the Hudson-M1 gets to make do without a built in VGA DAC as well, suggesting that AMD has seen the light and only allowed for HDMI display connectivity on its entry level notebook platform. All three chipsets feature a built in clock gen and fan controller as well as support for consumer IR and AMD’s MCTP management interface.

These specs might not be what we’ll see in the final chipsets, but it should prove to be quite close to the real deal. As always, as these things go, manufacturers make last minute changes and although we should be fairly close to the Brazos platform launch, Sabine isn’t expected to arrive until next year and AMD might still make some changes to its chipsets for that platform. Things are at least starting to get interesting now and hopefully we’ll be seeing some interesting notebooks from AMD’s partners based on these new platforms.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also a council member with Gerson Lehman Group. FullyAccurate

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